


Saving Sam

by brightly_lit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:05:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_lit/pseuds/brightly_lit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean wakes up in the hospital.  He's told he was in a coma, his mother and father are still alive ... and that he is Sam, an only child.  There never was a Dean.</p><p>"Take away Sam, and what was Dean? Nothing."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saving Sam

Dean woke up, as he had enough times before, shackled to a bed in a hospital. He started trying to work his hands out of the leather cuffs immediately, at the same time trying to figure out how he had ended up here. The last thing he remembered was Sam, Sam sick, Sam nearly dead, angels falling ... it wasn’t the end of the world--he and Sam managed to avert that--but it felt like it. For the angels to fall out of heaven, for angels to be dicks, for God himself to be AWOL ... his life was like a neverending nightmare.

However he ended up here, then, it couldn’t be good--angels, maybe, or more likely Crowley, demons in the bodies of nurses. They had some kind of plans for him undoubtedly--torture of some sort or another, whoever got him here. Best case, he’d gotten his ass seriously kicked by someone or something and landed himself in the hospital again, but with Sam so weak, he couldn’t come for Dean. As it had always been, Dean had to do it all, look after himself and Sammy, and jesus, why did this have to happen now, with Sam in the condition he was in? He had to get back and take care of him.

He wasn’t having his usual luck with the leather cuffs. There was no lock to pick--they were strapped and belted on--but truth was, even if there was a lock, he couldn’t quite seem to remember how to pick it. Weird; it had been second nature for decades now.

He heard a female voice outside his room and saw movement through the small window in the door. “Oh, my God, he’s awake!” Oh, boy, here we go. He remembered the wraith in the mental ward. He remembered the reaper right before Dad died trying its best to kill him. He remembered lots of things. He redoubled his efforts.

The door flew open. “Sam?” said a sinister-looking doctor, all kind concern--the shtriga, it was the shtriga! They hadn’t killed the bastard after all.

“I’ll kill you!” Dean shouted. “How did you get away?! I saw them--I saw the life-force go out of you, and the kids were okay! I know I killed you, you son of a bitch, so how are you here?”

The doctor feigned alarm; the nurse’s might be real. The doctor nodded at the nurse, murmuring something to her that Dean could swear was, “Call his father.” She nodded and left. 

Another nurse came in and started filling a syringe. Dean struggled harder and protested, but he was weak, so weak. He couldn’t remember ever being so weak. 

The shtriga guy held out a hand to her, telling her not to administer whatever it was just yet, and gingerly sat down on a rolling chair by Dean’s bed. “It’s okay, Sam,” he said. He reached to pat Dean’s shoulder, but thought better of it at Dean’s violent response, lunging toward him with everything he could--his torso and his head--his ankles were shackled, too, he now discovered. “It’s okay. You’ve been dreaming for a long time; it’s normal for you not to know right now what’s real and what’s not. You know how we know you’ve been dreaming? All the thrashing around,” he said with a smile, nodding to the shackles, which he reached for and then seemed to think better of unbuckling, at least for the moment. Wise fellow.

“I know exactly what’s real, you bastard. I know what you are and what you’ve done, I just can’t figure out how you’re still alive.”

The look of concern that rippled across the shtriga’s face seemed so genuine. So did the look he shared with the nurse. His face seemed so real, greyish under fluorescent light, aged ... human in a way no one had looked human in years. His emotions were so real, so transparent, complicated and raw and fragile. The nurse, too--Dean looked, and saw that humanity, that fragility, right before he realized it was the wraith, the wraith! Dean struggled in earnest now. There was nothing in Dad’s journal about wraiths and shtrigas teaming up. Most monsters would just as soon kill other kinds of monsters as kill you. If they were joining forces, the shit must really be about to hit the fan. Dean wondered vaguely how much more shit could possibly hit the fan as he tried desperately to escape, but he was tiring fast, out of breath, from this little struggle; what the hell was going on??

The first nurse appeared in the doorway, nodding to the doctor, saying, “He’s on his way.” 

Dean got his first real look at her, and there she was: Tessa, the reaper who had tried so hard to kill him before Dad gave his life for Dean’s. “What in the name of all that’s holy--Tessa, what the hell are you doing here, working with these monsters??”

Tessa exchanged quick looks with the shtriga and the wraith, and Tessa’s face showed only a simple joy. She flushed slightly, smiling, as the doctor noted, “He knows your name!”

“Guess you must remember me from all the times I read to you.”

“Seems like he remembers what you read a little too well, Tess,” said the doctor, with a rueful smile shared to some degree by all of them. “Told you not to read to him from those horror comics.”

Tessa looked genuinely regretful. “His dad said he liked comics,” she defended weakly, nothing like the Tessa Dean knew. “He said that’s all he ever read ....”

“I read him the Bible,” the wraith noted piously. 

“And his dad read him adventure stories,” said the doctor.

“What about his mom?” asked the wraith innocently. Dean gritted his teeth, remembering all the havoc her innocent act had led to. He and Sam had been fooled once by it, never again.

An odd reluctance came over the doctor’s face--a professionalism--as he said delicately, “She, uh ... she didn’t make it in to see him that much.”

Dean had been screwed with by monsters talking about his mom one too many times to fall for that now. “Where’s Sam?” Dean demanded.

“You’re right here, Sam,” said Tessa kindly, patting his foot.

“No one believed you would wake up,” said the wraith in wonder, “but I prayed, and look, a miracle!”

“I’ll show you a freakin’ miracle, you evil bitch! Tell me where my little brother is!” Dean was watching their faces closely for anything they might let slip, so he saw the confusion and concern come over all three of them at the same time.

“You don’t have a brother, Sam,” the doctor finally said gently. “It’s just you, and your mom and dad, so you can imagine how happy they’ll be when they see you’re finally awake.”

Dean didn’t seem to have his usual mental toughness any more than the physical strength he was accustomed to. That was the only explanation he had for why his eyes suddenly filled with tears and his heart felt too heavy to bear, for why the best retort he was able to come up with was, “No, I’m Dean.”

The look they shared now was one of pity. The wraith stroked his head tenderly. “You’ll get it all sorted out in no time,” she said, and the pity in her voice would have made him punch someone yesterday. Today, it made him hate himself as much as he ever had. He couldn’t even keep his little brother alive. He couldn’t even deserve one in the first place.

They left him alone for a few minutes, where he struggled vainly with the cuffs, weaker by the second, wondering what kind of world he’d ended up in. Maybe this was one of those djinn who fed off of fear, but this wasn’t fear he was feeling, it was devastation, confusion, desperation. All was lost. Was there a djinn that fed off of that? He’d have to get to Dad’s journal and see.

Twisting around, he caught sight of himself in a mirror, and he looked like Sam! Only ... only he wasn’t Sam, he was too short and too young. Way too short, and not that cute, and without the air of genius Sam carried around. No way. Sam wasn’t bad, but everyone knew Dean was the cute one. Sam might be the smart one, but Dean was better-looking than pretty much anyone else on the planet. It had never been much fun to be Dean, but that had definitely been one of the perks. What kind of perfect world had the djinn created for Dean?! That settled it; it definitely wasn’t a happy-dream djinn.

The voice in the doorway shot through him like a bullet--a sensation he was all too well accustomed to by now. Dad. Dad there, looking so normal in khakis and a sweater, kind of like the sweaters Sammy wore when he was at Stanford. Dad didn’t seem badass at all, especially once the tears started streaming down his face, like they did that one time Dean almost died, when Tessa almost took him, when Dad told him the secret about Sam, that he might have to die. 

“Son,” Dad cried, then sat beside him and clutched him to him as tightly as he could, and all Dean could think was how real he smelled, more real than he could ever remember him smelling, even when he and Sam were kids. This was not the dad who had acted like he barely cared when he knew Dean was dying, not the dad who barked orders at them and taught them to bow-hunt (Dean loved it, even when Sam hated it), not the dad who was obsessed with hunting down the demon who had done what it did to Sam in order to kill it and make all the badness go away, make everything go back to the way it used to be. It was just ... Dad.

“Dad, where’s Sam?” Dean asked him urgently.

Dad didn’t even hesitate. “You’re right here, son,” he wept, stroking Dean’s head with trembling hands. “You’re finally back home, my sweet boy.”

If even Dad didn’t know the truth, then it couldn’t really be Dad. It couldn’t really be Dad, anyway; Dad was dead. Dean tried to steel himself against that knowledge, to prepare to kill whatever monster was taking Dad’s form. Instead he wept, too, beyond thought. Was he really so weak that some monster could come along and say a few words and reduce him to this childish neediness? Had his real dad taught him nothing? This monster must be inside his mind. It must know all his weaknesses. Take away Sam, and what was Dean? Nothing. 

It had to be a djinn. When the djinn got him that first time, that was the one thing he didn’t have in his perfect fantasy world that he had in the real world: Sam. Sam hated him in that world, but at least he was there. To take him away? “You made a serious miscalculation, buddy,” Dean managed to choke out. “You’ve got me now, I’ll give you that, but I’ll get out of this. I know what you are.”

His dad drew back to peer into his face for a moment, plainly confused, then looked to the shtriga doctor, who sighed. “It’s been like this since he woke up. It makes sense. Some coma patients remember dreaming, sometimes very meaningful dreams. Some of them even remember the dream that sort of brought them out of it. He’s been dreaming all this time--vivid dreams, from the sound of things. He just hasn’t quite come all the way back to reality yet. He’ll get there.”

Dad gave a rueful smile. “Those adventure books I read him,” he sighed.

“It wasn’t just you,” said Tessa guiltily.

Dad looked at him, deep in his eyes, with no trace of fear or doubt, just absolute sincerity, and Dean couldn’t remember Dad ever looking like this before, ever, so vulnerable. “Do you remember what happened, son?” he asked gently. At the look on Dean’s face, Dad went on, “You were playing soccer, goalie, and--and there was an accident with the goal post, you hit your head so hard ....” His eyes welled up again, and Dean stared, entranced, at the lines on his dad’s face, at the way the tear traveled down it. Was it his imagination, or had everything all this time had this veneer of perfection, every face just a little too beautiful, every body a little too perfect, the lighting just right? What was real?

“But--but it’s Sam who played soccer,” Dean stuttered.

Dad smiled and nodded. “That’s right, Sam. Oh, god, Sam. Eight years. It feels like a hundred. You were so young, and ... and you’re a man now! Twenty-two. We can celebrate your twenty-first a little bit late.” He grinned through the tears. A vague memory came to Dean, among memories already beginning to fade, of a grown-up little girl in a hospital bed in a coma who looked like Snow White, making her fairy-tale dreams into nightmares come true.

“We have to find Sam,” Dean insisted, getting close to hysterical. “I have to look out for him, that’s my job, my only job, Dad, don’t you see? I have to save Sam!”

“You did it, son,” Dad sighed, kissing his head and hugging him tight. “You saved my Sam.”

~ The End ~


End file.
